Pineapple
Pineapple gives me atlas tongue. But I still eat it. Still travel the world on my
tastebuds. Pineapple for breakfast in Hawaii with frangipanis on my plate and pink
ahi poke. I never got to the Dole plantation, I was too busy drinking Piña Coladas
on the beach. Bags of sweet pineapple rings by the side of the road on the way to
Queensland. Too many hours in the back seat of my grandfather’s yellow Ford.
Sticky fingers winding down the window and my grandmother passing me tissues
from the front seat. Sweet and sour chicken in Hong Kong tasted different to my
local Chinese restaurant. But it was still tart and toffee coloured and stained the
plate orange. Your birthday in New York. Deconstructed pineapple upside-down
cake. I had never seen you so disappointed. It was a pineapple sponge. Right side
up. With a piece of candied pineapple on the side. You blew out the candle, I ate the
sugary pineapple ring and we left. In our tiny apartment I made you a Betty Crocker
pineapple upside-down cake. I longed for a syrupy can of Golden Circle. But you told
me to close my eyes. You lit a stumpy candle and told me that I could have your wish.
Cassandra Atherton is an award-winning poet and was invited to be on the judging
panel for the prestigious 2015 Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Lord
Mayor's prize for poetry and the 2014 ABR short story competition. She was invited
to be poetry editor for Westerly Literary Journal and Mascara Literary Review in
2014-2015 and her poetry has appeared in Best Australian Poems from 2012-2015.
She has been awarded a Harvard Visiting Scholar’s position from August 2015 to
September 2016 and was a visiting fellow at Sophia University, Tokyo in 2014.